Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/220

208 Other examples might be given were it at all needful, but those already stated are surely sufficient to establish the principle. Among herbivorous and omnivorous species, where food is plentiful, there is no occasion for the male to take upon him the duties of provider, but among the Carnivora he frequently supports as well as defends his family. The lion is in this respect a well-known instance.

We find, therefore, that throughout the class Mammalia the respective tasks of the two sexes are precisely such as we find in our own species: the male is the defender and provider, wherever such defense and provision are necessary; the female is the nurse. The man who brings home to his wife his weekly earnings, his professional fees, or his share of the profits of a business, merely repeats on a higher scale the action of the lion who carries a deer or an antelope to his den. Each sex fulfills the tasks for which it is especially adapted by Nature, and anything like "subjugation" is utterly out of the question. Were the duties of the two sexes confounded together, or, still more, were they inverted—the female, for instance, going forth to face danger or to hunt for prey, while the male was left to nurse the young—the position of the species in the great and constant struggle for existence would be very decidedly altered for the worse. We must conclude, therefore, that the attempt to alter the present relations of the sexes is not a rebellion against some arbitrary law instituted by a despot or a majority—not an attempt to break the yoke of a mere convention; it is a struggle against Nature; a war undertaken to reverse the very conditions under which not man alone, but all mammalian species have reached their present development. Sentimental speakers and writers have commented on the well-known fact that even a very young boy will, to his utmost ability, defend his sister or female playmate, and have expressed a hope that this habit—the result of early training—would wear out, the female no longer needing and the male no longer offering protection. Alas! is the very same habit in the ape, the lion, or the bison, the result of a mistaken training, or of an old-world convention, to be laid aside in these enlightened days? What would be the position of a family of young lions if both their parents went forth to hunt? Yet very similar will be that of children if their mother, as well as their father, goes out to the daily toils of a profession, leaving them perhaps to themselves—perhaps to the care of ignorant and unprincipled hirelings. The results of mothers withdrawn from domestic duties, and spending their days in industrial pursuits, have been sufficiently exemplified in our manufacturing towns. Here, in the very highest interests of the race, it has been found necessary to check and limit female labor, which ought never to have been introduced. Had this precaution been taken, a man would have been able to earn as much as he and his wife jointly have been able to realize under the factory system. But what reason have we to expect that the introduction of female labor into professional spheres will prove a